Skittles For Trayvon: A Diminishing Suite In Verse Analysis
“Surrender is no guarantee that an armed police officer will not shoot you,” this quote by Steven Magee symbolizes exactly what victim Trayvon Martin experienced. According to an article written in 2015, the first ever attempt by United States record keepers to properly record the average of 928 individuals were killed by law enforcement over eight contemporary years as compared to 383 which was falsely publicized and miscounted by the FBI. In Lillian Bertram’s poem, “Skittles for Trayvon: A Diminishing Suite in Verse,” she depicts this prominent issue by reenacting a popular case through her poetry. The Trayvon Martin shooting occurred on the 26th February in 2012 when Martin, a 17-year old teenager, was fatally shot by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman while walking back to home in the gated community where he was momentarily staying.
Lillian Bertram who is currently in the process of acquiring her PhD in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Utah has been recognized for her work that often supports the African American community. The theme that her poem “Skittles for
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Discrimination is the practice of biased treatment towards a specific group of people. Whether people realize it or not unjust treatment and the rising of a white supremacy society is still an issue that is often overlooked. Bertram’s poem “Skittles for Trayvon” addresses racial discrimination. Lines 12-13 of stanza three in part one of the poem states, “The Water People were harvesters/and the Volcano People sowed in ash.” These lines clearly depict a division between two groups of people. Bertram makes it clear that the “Water People” were the bread winners serving as harvesters while for the “Volcano People” this can be seen as the opposite as they “sowed in ash.” These line depict the similar stereotyped division between Caucasians and African Americans in society
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